Baby sense of smell

One of the important senses is the sense of smell. Unborn or newborn babies, both can differentiate between smells with their tiny sweet nose. Researches show that the baby’s sense of smell is the first one to develop as compared to other four senses. The baby’s sense of smell starts working in the womb itself.

Experts reveal that this is to develop connection and bonding with the mother. Baby’s sense of smell can pick up certain smells and relate and associate things and people with it. With sense of smell in the early stages the child shows that by facial expressions. The difference between good and foul smell is well recognized by the baby. The smell of the baking cake or some aromatic smell makes the baby happy.

The baby can also identify and know the mother’s smell not after some months or days from birth but from the very beginning. It has been known that the baby can smell the mother’s fluid, better called as the amniotic fluid and hence recognize the difference between it and the other smells thus the baby feels more comfortable when he can sense the mother’s smell near him. Experts say that the baby can smell the mother’s clothes and hair. Surprisingly the baby can also smell the mother’s breast milk and will never feed on other women breast milk. Baby as young as four five days shows some sighs of satisfaction and contentment when they smell their mother’s breast milk. The pleasure they show at this symbolizes that the four-five day baby also understands the mothers love and care.

With these advantages some disadvantages have also been noticed in the baby’s sense of smell. This lack in acuity in the baby’s sense of smell can be a reason as to why the babies are not able to identify the safer and dangerous zones by sense of smell. Cleaning liquids and fluids, acid smells do not affect much to the babies. As responsible parents it becomes ones duty to make the baby aware of good but dangerous smells. To teach the babies this they need to be more exposed to smelling items. With such a exposure slowly they will learn to choose for themselves what is nice and foul smell. At times smell of a particular fruit or food may lead to avoiding of it by the baby. In this case the parents need to make the food item be tasted by the baby. With development of sense of sight and sense of hearing the babies’ sense of smell has lesser load.